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Do you need to quickly come up with a story idea? Well, let's not mess around.
Learn a practical brainstorming method to create original story ideas by observing people and asking key questions about their actions and motivations.
Key Takeaways
- All stories revolve around people and how they react to change.
- Observing mundane human behavior can inspire rich story ideas.
- Asking 'why' someone behaves a certain way helps develop character depth.
- Conflict or change related to a character's traits drives the story forward.
- Empathy is a valuable tool for understanding characters and creating believable stories.
What the video covers
- The video introduces the 'One Truth and Four Questions' method for generating story ideas quickly.
- It emphasizes observing everyday people doing ordinary things and writing down these observations as 'story seeds.'
- The core truth is that all stories are about people and their reactions to change.
- Story seeds are developed by asking why a person is doing something, revealing character traits and motivations.
- The method encourages empathy by imagining the reasons behind people's behavior rather than judging them.
- Characters are given defining traits based on observed actions and inferred motivations.
- The next step is to imagine the best or worst thing that could happen to the character, creating conflict or change.
- The video illustrates the method using an example character named Cathy, a nervous job seeker.
- It suggests using the questions to build story ideas that explore universal human conditions.
- Finally, the video encourages viewers to practice by sharing ideas and breaking them down using the method.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Overview
- 00:24Observing People to Find Story Seeds
- 01:00Why Boring Observations Matter
- 01:59The Universal Truth: Stories Are About People
- 02:55Stories and Change: The Detective Example
- 03:25Question 1: Why Are They Doing That?
- 04:13Empathy Through Observation
- 04:42Example Character: Cathy the Job Seeker
- 05:16Question 2: What Does That Say About Them?
- 05:41Defining Personality Traits
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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I'll show you how. Before I start, I just want to say that this isn't the only way to come up with a story idea.
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It's just one approach I have to come up with ideas that have the potential to carry a story.
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I call this approach One Truth and Four Questions. And I bet that by the end of this video, you'll have an inkling of an idea that you'll be ready to build on.
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So let's get started. If you can't be bothered to watch this entire video, here's the idea in a nutshell: you observe somebody doing something, and you write it down.
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In observing someone, just take a journal, or more likely your phone, out with you and start watching people.
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Now I'm not saying you should be a creep and stalk someone across town. Instead, you can just sit in, I don't know, a cafe, on a park bench, virtually scroll through a city using Google Maps, or wander through some place you've been in your memory palace.
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All you have to do is write down something that someone is doing. The point is not to wait for something interesting to happen.
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At this point, boring is good. If you see a man struggling with an armful of shopping bags, write it down.
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If you spot a young boy lingering outside the window of a bakery before rushing off to catch his bus, write that down.
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If you see a middle-aged woman standing outside an office building draining a cigarette, write that one down.
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I call these story seeds. They're not fully fledged story ideas yet, but they all have the potential to become one.
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Now, you don't need to pack your book or phone full of these story seeds to get started.
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In fact, you probably don't want to have too many, or you'll suffer from choice paralysis, where you're worrying whether you picked the right idea to run with.
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The truth is, I think there are no bad seeds. But before we start planting these seeds, allow me a minute to make a grand sweeping statement that I know a lot of people in the comments are going to dislike.
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I think it doesn't matter what genre you're writing in, what medium or form you're writing in, there's one universal truth to all stories, and that is all stories are about people.
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Without people, there are no stories. Even if you're writing about talking animals, or alien races, or two rocks perched on a cliff together, there will still be characters in your story.
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Without that, we're just describing settings, and that isn't a story. Adding to that, all stories are about how people react to change.
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Either something happens to that character to bring about change into their life, their daily routines, their habits, whatever.
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Or they are presented with an opportunity or enticement to change something about themselves. Let's just think about a basic detective story, and they're usually about a person or group of people going about their business until a change arrives in their life, usually
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in the form of a murder or a big crime. The story is then about how they deal with that change.
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How the witnesses react to the change of losing a colleague or a loved one.
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How the murderer tries to avoid the change of going to prison by covering their tracks.
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How the detective reacts to new information and changing stories. So, all good stories are about people and their reaction to change.
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So what do we do with that? Well, we do what all good detectives do, and we ask questions.
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In order to turn those seeds in your journal or your phone into genuine story ideas, let's put them through the wringer with some questions, starting with-- Question one: why are they doing that?
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For me, this is the most interesting part of people watching. To ask yourself, what's their deal?
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Where have they come from and why are they doing that? Even the most banal piece of behaviour can be driven by something interesting.
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So keep your eye out and ask yourself always, why are they doing that? A woman walks through a park carrying a leash.
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Maybe she's a dog trainer whose champion Dalmatian is letting off steam with a run through the park.
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Maybe she's a dog napper with a pocket full of treats looking to ransom someone's priceless pooch.
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Or maybe her beloved pet dog recently died and lost in grief she finds herself back at this park every single day in the vain hope that her dog will come running through the bushes once more.
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I think in general that this is a fantastic exercise in empathy. How often have you been in public and spotted someone acting out and thought to yourself, ugh, what a nuisance they're making of themselves?
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But instead of dismissing them as being generically bad or rude, take a moment and put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself, why are they doing that?
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And you might find a logical human reason for why they might be acting that way.
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In no time, I promise you'll be coming up with more interesting characters and you might even find yourself getting less frustrated with strangers.
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For the sake of illustration, I'm going to pick someone I observed earlier: that nervy woman smoking a cigarette outside an office building.
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So, what is she doing? Is she taking a break after a particularly stressful meeting with her boss?
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Is she killing time waiting for someone, perhaps a boyfriend, to finish work and come out to meet her?
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Or maybe she's headed to the job centre on the third floor and she's trying to clear her nerves before heading up to sign on for unemployment benefits.
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Now that one, that sounds interesting to me. So let's run with that and let's give her a name: Cathy.
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Cathy the Job Seeker. Here to sign on. Question two: what does that say about them?
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By looking at a person and providing a reason for their behaviour, we're giving them a personality trait.
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For our purposes, we're going to assume that it's a defining personality trait, something from which we can build their character.
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What do I mean by that? If we see someone running away from a bee, we might infer that they are fearful in real life.
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If you see someone gently picking up a bee from the pavement and putting them by a little pool of water, we might assume that they are protective and generous.
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But if they calmly trap a bee under a glass and leave it there, we might take them to be cruel or sadistic.
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So with Cathy the Job Seeker, who we see smoking nervously outside the job centre.
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From this we might infer that she is self-conscious or embarrassed, perhaps at her newfound position.
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She needs the welfare money but she hates that she's in this situation. So from that we can tell that she is proud and maybe cares a lot about what other people think.
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So now that we know what our character is like and what drives them, we're in a position to make something happen to them.
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Question three: what's the best or worst thing that could happen to them? Remember what I said at the beginning about stories being about people and their reaction to change?
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So now that we know who our characters are, roughly speaking, something has to happen that brings change, or the threat of change, into the equation.
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So what we're really looking for is some sort of new situation that puts their defining characteristic to the test.
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So when I'm asking what is the best or worst thing that could happen to them, I don't mean, you know, they can suddenly win the lottery or they get hit by a bus.
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So knowing what I know about this character, what interesting thing could happen to them, good or bad, that is specific to their character trait?
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With Job Seeker Cathy, we know that she's self-conscious and proud. So what interesting thing could happen to her?
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Perhaps she spots an old classmate on the street, someone who's now a high-flying CEO.
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How would Cathy react to that? She knows that the right thing to do would be to say hello and tell her the truth.
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But she's proud and self-conscious, remember? That's a hard thing to change. So instead, she probably fibs and doesn't reveal why she's there.
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Or if you want to pile the pressure on Cathy, she might, in a moment of madness, tel
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A great job, no less. And then the rest of the story could go on to be about Cathy and how she's keeping up appearances with her new high flying pal.
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Or how about this? Instead of bumping into a mega successful friend, she encounters an old classmate who has also fallen on hard times, who's also there to sign on.
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Cathy now has an opportunity to surrender her pride and connect with an old friend and provide some comfort and camaraderie.
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But because change is hard, Kathy doesn't, and instead she chooses to lie and say that she's got a great job nearby.
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I think this is an idea that has the ability to carry a story, because the conflict is closely tied in to Cathy's defining personality characteristics.
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And it also is related to this idea of change. It's about a prideful person who finds herself in a new low status position (a change).
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When given this opportunity to relinquish herself of this crippling pride-- change-- she resists and asserts this false higher status as a balm to soothe her wounded sense of self.
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Again, we can ask ourselves, why is she doing this? And from there, we can start chipping away at something universal about this thing we call the human condition.
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If we were just writing a short story, it could end here. There's a beginning, there's a middle, there's an end, there's an internal conflict that's fairly interesting.
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But this can also work as the jumping off point for a longer piece of work.
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What happens next is up to the writer, but we know that the end has to relate somehow to Cathy's sense of pride and whether she's able to change, or whether her pride will get the best of her for the rest of time.
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Cool, so there we have it: a story idea. But before we go, there's one more question I want you to ask.
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Question four: where else could this happen? I really like this process for coming up with new ideas, but it does run the risk of generating a lot of ideas set near cute cafes or on high streets that look a lot like your hometown.
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But the important part of the story is not your character's name, job, or gender, or even the location.
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It's their fundamental characteristic, it's the nature of the conflict they find themselves in, and it's in how they react to change.
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Anything else you can change and move to a different time or location, depending on the type of story you want to tell.
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Want to write a fantasy story? Well, move this to a medieval world, and this becomes a story about a prideful magician who comes from far away to seek financial assistance from a well known wizard only to discover that he is also broke.
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Science fiction? A prideful space trucker has just pulled into an intergalactic filling station with an empty cargo hold.
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She is on the verge of begging for work from a robber baron before she encounters a fellow long haul space trucker who's in an even worse position than she is.
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Historical fiction. A prideful, masterless samurai turns up in a new town to beg for a position in the service of a new lord, only to discover another ronin wearing rags has turned up at the same time.
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Because we're building an idea around people and how they behave, you could put it in almost any context.
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Since the dawn of time, there have been prideful people, just as there have been people dealing with grief, or lost in nostalgia, or obsessively caring for other people.
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Stories about humans and their reactions to change can take place in any time, in any location that you like.
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Just remember the one truth and four questions. All stories are about people and their reaction to change.
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So observe people and ask yourself, why are they doing that? What does that say about them?
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Knowing that, what's the most interesting thing that could happen to them? And where else could this happen?
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So give it a go. Start snooping around and creating story ideas of your own.
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If you want to practice, share an idea in the comments below and break it down using all of these questions.
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Remember to like and subscribe to this channel for more content and I'll see you next week.
Topics:story ideasbrainstormingcreative writingcharacter developmentstorytellingwriting tipsReedsywriting methodoriginal storieswriting process
